Page 26 of Molly's Mr. Wrong
“He pretended to be me and set this whole thing up.”
Finn did his best not to laugh, because Mike was obviously upset. “Well...” he said slowly “...you’ve got to kind of admire his strategy.”
Mike grunted and then shook his head. “This won’t do.”
Finn didn’t bother mentioning that Mike had brought this upon himself. He figured that Mike was well aware of that. “I gotta get going.” His grandfather needed privacy as he came to terms with this unexpected turn of events.
Mike waved at him, still staring at the monitor. Finn headed out the door, almost bumping into Lola, who was sweeping dried mud near the side exit.
“What’s up?” she asked, motioning toward the office with her broom.
“The roosters have come home to roost.” She frowned. “Cal got the better of him. For now, anyway.”
“I don’t want to know.” Lola focused on the floor once again.
“You don’t,” Finn agreed. The store was quiet and Chase was in the warehouse inventorying stock. “If you don’t need me, I’m going to clock out.”
Lola waved a hand, very much as Mike had done, and Finn headed back out into the weather. Fifteen minutes later he parked as close to the house as he could get and dashed through the rain to his front porch. He shoved the key in the lock and had just turned it when he heard the noise. A faint mewling.
He cocked his head and held still, wondering if he’d imagined the sound.
Nothing.
He opened the door and then heard it again. A faint thread of sound winding its way through the pounding rain.
Finn stood, half in and half out of the house, listening. Then he scuffed a foot over the porch and the soft cry sounded again. A baby...something.
He pulled his ball cap down tighter, stepped out into the rain and walked about the porch to crouch at the side opening to see if he could find anything. No, but he could hear the sound more clearly. Hoping against hope that he wasn’t about to rescue a small skunk, he got down onto the wet grass and eased himself under the porch on his side. He stopped halfway in, his legs still sticking out in the rain, and waited a moment to get his bearings. The baby had gone silent, so he rolled over onto his belly to get a better view. There, in the far corner where the ground sloped up toward the foundation making the space between ground and porch way too tight for him, was a small gray kitten.
Oh man.
He scooted farther under the porch. “Come here, baby.”
The kitten hunched back into the corner, so Finn continued to inch forward, until his back hit the joists above him and then he reached his arm out as far as it would go. The kitten shrank back again, but he managed to get hold of the nape of its neck with two fingers and drag it toward him. The baby let out a distress howl that would certainly have brought a mother to the rescue, if one was in the vicinity. Finn had a bad feeling that she was not.
Slowly he pushed his way backward out from under the porch and into the soaking-wet grass. Once he was able to sit upright he put the kitten to his chest, where it immediately stuck its tiny claws into his coat, clinging like a cocklebur. Finn put a hand over the small animal and got to his feet.
“So where’s your mama, little guy?”
The kitten pressed against him as Finn walked up the steps and in through the door he’d left open. The furnace was blasting away in response to the cold air that had come into the living room while he’d been belly-crawling under the porch. Finn shut the door behind him then went into the bathroom for a hand towel, which he used to rub the shivering kitten.
His best guess was that if the little guy had a mother, she would have been there with him during the deluge, keeping him warm. Finn held the kitten up in front of him. His eyes were mostly open, which made him around two weeks old and nowhere near weaned. The kitten opened his mouth as if to cry, but nothing came out, so Finn curled the little guy up under his chin, tilting his head to make him a warm pocket, then reached for his phone.
“Hey,” he said when Mike answered. “We have kitten milk replacer, right?”
“I think so.”
“Would you look?” Otherwise he was going to have to start calling the larger ranch supply stores or see if he could find a vet.
“Yeah. We do,” Mike said when he came back on the line.
“I have an orphan kitten. He’s skin and bones. Barely two weeks old.”
“I’ll be right over.”
“I can come to your place. Or the store.”
“Naw. Wait there. I wouldn’t mind an excuse to escape. Cal’s here.”
